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Derek obtained his first degree from Oxford University in 1983 and his PhD from Durham University in 1987. He worked at Lancashire Polytechnic for three years and carried out postdoctoral research at Cambridge University for three years. He was a senior research fellow at the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh, for five years, before being appointed to a lectureship in Cardiff University in 1998. Derek was awarded a personal chair by Cardiff University in 2007, and promoted to Deputy Head of School in 2010. He was made Director of the Jermiah Horrocks Institute in July 2012. He currently leads a research group in Observational Star Formation, which has both post-doctoral and post-graduate members, partly funded through a consolidated grant from STFC.

Research

Teaching

Derek has taught a second year course in 'Observational Techniques in Astronomy' and was responsible for the second, third and fourth year astronomy teaching laboratories and telescopes at Cardiff University. He has previously demonstrated in the first year computing laboratory and in the first year physics laboratory. Derek has also taught a fourth year course on Spectroscopy. He gave first and second year tutorials and supervised third and fourth year undergraduate projects. He also teaches a number of postgraduate PhD students.

Conferences

Derek has been invited to give papers at many international conferences, including 'Protostars and Planets V' in Kona in 2005, and the International Astronomical Union (IAU) Symposium on 'Star formation at high angular resolution' in Sydney in 2003. He has written a number of invited review papers for various publications, including for 'Science' in 2002, and for 'The ISO Science Legacy' in 2005.

Research

Derek's research interests lie in the field of the formation of stars and planets. In particular he is interested in the very earliest stages of star formation. He co-authored the seminal discovery paper of Class 0 protostars, and also identified the even earlier evolutionary stage known as pre-stellar cores. Derek has appeared on the BBC 'Sky at night' programme on six occasions, and the Radio 4 'Today' programme once, talking about his research. He has published nearly 200 papers in total, including over 100 refereed publications, which have received over 4000 citations.

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Awards

Derek was awarded a visiting Professorship of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), France, for academic year 2005/6, held jointly at the Observatoire de Bordeaux and Centre d'Etudes Nucleaires de Saclay. He also spent a Sabbatical Summer Research Associateship at the University of Illinois in 1997.